Chip equipment sales surge
Global sales of semiconductor‑manufacturing equipment rose 15% in 2025 to a record $135.1 billion, led by investment in advanced logic, memory and AI‑related capacity. (digitimes.com) The data underscores that physical build‑out for AI continues even as market narratives shift. (digitimes.com)
Chipmakers and their suppliers spent a record $135.1 billion on manufacturing equipment in 2025, up 15% from $117.1 billion a year earlier. (semi.org) That money went into the machines that etch, deposit, test and package chips inside fabrication plants, or fabs. SEMI said 2025 spending was driven by new capacity for advanced logic chips, memory chips and artificial-intelligence workloads. (semi.org) The biggest jumps came after the wafer is made. Test-equipment billings climbed 55% in 2025, and assembly and packaging equipment sales rose 21% as high-bandwidth memory and advanced packaging became more central to artificial-intelligence systems. (semi.org) Front-end tools, the equipment used to process silicon wafers in the fab, also kept growing. SEMI said wafer-processing equipment sales increased 12% and other front-end segments rose 13% in 2025. (semi.org) The spending was concentrated in Asia. China, Taiwan and South Korea accounted for 79% of the global market in 2025, up from 74% in 2024. (semi.org) China remained the largest single market at $49.31 billion, essentially flat from 2024. Taiwan jumped 90% to $31.50 billion and moved into second place, while South Korea rose 26% to $25.75 billion. (seaj.or.jp) North America moved the other way. Equipment billings there fell 20% to $10.89 billion in 2025, while Japan rose 22% to $9.52 billion and Europe dropped 41% to $2.86 billion. (seaj.or.jp) The reason investors watch this category is simple: equipment orders show where chip capacity is being built before the chips themselves show up in servers, phones or cars. Ajit Manocha, SEMI’s chief executive, said the 2025 total reflected build-outs in “leading-edge logic, advanced memory and high-bandwidth architectures.” (semi.org) The build-out is not slowing yet. On April 1, 2026, SEMI said worldwide 300-millimeter fab equipment spending is expected to rise another 18% to $133 billion in 2026 and 14% to $151 billion in 2027. (semi.org) That leaves the chip boom looking less like a software story than a construction story. The money is still flowing into the factories, the packaging lines and the test floors that artificial-intelligence hardware needs. (semi.org)
